Here's what I was doing in the market, What were you up to ?

I used to do a lot of obliteration crafting (buy recipe-> craft-> sell). Haven't done much marketing for like the last two months.

So, I'll tell the story of converters.

After TopDoc's post, I decided that since I didn't have a lot of liquid cash but I was certain he was right - that purples would crash and be far cheaper. I decided it was a shame you couldn't "short" in the CoH market.

In the real world, when you short a stock, you effectively "borrow" a share from someone, and sell it. You pay interest on the "loan" and have to return the share later, but if it declines in value, you can make money by repaying after buying it back for less.

Then I realize I could short the market. I had 6-8 toons with full purples, assembled casually playing since launch and even doing a bit of marketeering since release. That netted me probably an average of 500-600m per purple, and I plowed them into bids. At first I was getting them for 60-70m, but the supply continued to rise. Post-converters, I had so many merits and h-merits and a-merits and e-merits, I kept converting, and since they were still running 400m+ for a while, I was buying for as much as 200m and flipping them.

Anyhow, it ended well. 200+ pvp IOs, 600+ purples, and scores of LotG, Miracle, Numina, etc; and that's on top of all the stuff I re-slotted back into my toons I "shorted".

Anyhow, I took a few screenshots along the way just to sort of commemorate the madness: http://imgur.com/a/AXjdm#9

Since then I aggressively flipped purples, and I PvP farmed pretty heavily, 5-boxing in the NW corner of Siren's Call on Liberty. At first I was collecting L15s, but there was a limited market so I swapped to just doing 50s. At first I was crafting, and then I decided to just sell them. I was probably selling 20-30 a week or so lately, just dumping most for 85,000,001 (usually sold for 90). High value ones I'd bother listing, but almost all sold within a day.

Lately with the purple crash I started crafting the pvp IOs; thanks to a comment on here, I realized that you could actually make decent money if you crafted them and did little one-off converts just aiming for "not totally crap". Anyhow, it was going well.

I was also starting to attack niches:

- L50 Red Fortunes (most of which I just crafted and flipped, but I also converted some in the defense set with 2 converters, to get LotGs)
- Kinetic Combats (mostly dmg/rech; someone was opposing me well, so I ended up deciding to match their bid exactly so I could hide within their own buying, which appeared to work; they stopped raising their bid and I was getting a steady flow)
- salvage flipping, which I'd never done; I was aggressively bidding on rares, usually batches of 100 so far across several toons. I did it on ones I played actively so I wouldn't be logging them in JUST to salvage

Anyhow. Good times.

I was the infamous bidder that used any combination of 10,101,101 7,010,101 16,010,010 40,010,010 or any other combination of the such. I never made any artificial shortages to create profit.

Here is a list of what i flipped in in no particular order
LVL 50 almost all Luck of the Gamblers, Positrons Blast, Numina's, Obliterations, Doctored Wounds, Red Fortunes, Gaussians, Aegis, Devistations, Thunderstrikes, Crushing Impacts, Efficacy Adapters, Performance Shifters.

Below 50 i dabbed in Steadfast, Kinetic Combats, Miracles

I dabbed in respec receipes, all purples, ATOs, all level 50 rare salvage from time to time.

I used converters for mostly personal use, over 1000 converted purples sitting in base.
I started farming PvP IOs about a month ago, for personal use, not profit.

Im sitting on over 500 Billion Influence Liquid, 1 Base of purples, 1 Base of High End IOs i use in all my builds, 1 Base of ATOs and 1 Base of Generic/Low end IOs.

Sorry if i stepped on some of the other market Gurus toes, but i enjoyed MarketPvPin with you guys.

I was buying stuff to..you know..PLAY the game.

Not too be snarky..cause if you enjoyed playing the market, fair enough.

But..Im SURE that huge pile of..500 billion? is such a huge comfort, considering we have 3 months to go.

So just because i played the market that means i dont play the game? Truly i did not know i had so much influence since most of it was tied up at wentworths. I dumped all my stuff listed for 1 influence and that is the number it ended up. But whatever, your angry i get it.

I, also, had a stockpile of about half a trillion inf. Mostly spread across multiple servers on toons specifically dedicated to marketing while parked. Simply so that I could play my mains without worrying about going over on Inf anyplace.

That said, after the announcement, with Protector (my home) being my least cash-rich server, I still liquidated over 14 billion into prestige. Transferring the rest to push myself higher on the server "top 100" could be done. But that'd be a lot of busywork, moving only about 20 billion at a pop.

Too, if we're able to save the game, I don't necessarily want to start over COMPLETELY from scratch.

Clicking on the linked image above will take you off the City of Heroes site. However, the guides will be linked back here.

This is from intrinsic

If anyone asked me how to make billions in CoH, I would tell them to go read the market forums.

What was I doing? Following the posts of TopDoc, Plasma, and Arcana (Well, only Arcana when converters came out).

Then I would try to see what they said and try it out.

Then I made money.

I was pretty much poor for the majority of my time playing, and it wasn't until the past couple of years I started having some excess inf.

So, thanks to everyone who didn't mind sharing secrets and knowledge. Hopefully I can find you in the new markets I'm entering now.

A couple years ago, I got into marketing. Made my first billion, posted the screenshot, and kept going from there. I never really had a niche; I moved from one thing to another, usually making a few million off each transaction.

Then I realized something: That money didn't do me much good. The enhancements I use rarely exist on the market (I like level 25, and that doesn't have a huge supply), and I don't use a lot of purples and PVP IOs, so I don't need a huge amount of cash - Merits do me more good.

That's when I stopped playing the market. I still do a few things to maximize my income; I have all the memorization badges, and I craft all my common salvage into IOs before selling it. I craft and sell any valuable drops. Anything that's related to valuable drops ("crap" purples, LotG: Def/Rech, etc), I'll craft and hold on to, and I'll convert it as I get converters, and list it when I have something good.
Anything that's left over, I'll list for 1 if there's any bidders, and take to a vendor otherwise.

Most of my play time is spent soloing story arcs or teaming on TFs, so I tend to have plenty of merits for anything I need.

My last attempt at marketeering was done not long after Going Rogue: I made a stalker named The Gold Seller, levelled him up to 10 (so he'd have a decent number of market slots), and parked him at the market. I filled all his slots with bids of 1 inf on Gold and Alchemical Gold. As the bids filled, I claimed them and relisted them for 1. I'd switch between the two when I saw someone else working either niche, but I never worked on anything else. By the end of two weeks, I had 100 million on him.

Back when I was marketing heavily I mostly worked in the low-margin high-volume craft and sell IOs. Basically I looked for IOs where I could buy and craft for less than 5million and sell for 15-20million. Positron's Blast were some of my earlier ones but over time the profit from them dropped a lot and I started maxing into other areas. In general I avoided damage set (to much competition) and focused on the various defensive and healing sets. Aegis was probably my biggest earner pre-Freedom although it dropped afterwards due to increasing competition.

I was never really rich (I think I peaked out at about 24 billion) but that was enough to afford top-end builds on those 50s that I actually played. Last time I took a break I took a lot of that income and plowed it into purples, stockpiling a few of each damage set for future characters.

I mostly just flipped whatever I wanted to buy for myself. "Hmmmm, I need 4 more def/+run speed for this stone tank. Guess I'll buy a dozen cheap and resell 8 for profit." That's been my marketeering for the past year or two. Got out of specific niches quite a while back, although I still sometimes buy L25/L30 Acc, Dmg, Rchg, and End Mod for cheap and resell to start my purse on characters.

RagManX

What I did in the market was try to stay out of the Market except as needed.

I used reward merits, a/e merits, morality merits, purple drops, and AE reward tables for the choicest morsels and only purchased the less expensive recipes from WW, and crafted them myself with AE bought salvage. I had a lot of fun doing it, never had more than a few billion, and never needed that. Tricked out every toon I found I wanted to play, as much as I wanted, and only needed a few days of patience to get the hardest to find stuff. I actually gave away more 2-3 times more purples to SG mates & friends than I ever bought.

Some games I've been in before I got so into the market I never had time to actually play the rest of the game (love the numbers I guess), so I made it a point I would enjoy everything else here, and I have. So every time I've been to the market & seen those prices, I've always been tempted to jump in for a piece of that action - but then I just step back, salute you guys, get what I need & go earn a few merits for the next toon that will need it